Elevate Your Chicken Hot Pot Broth With One Creamy Ingredient

A well-seasoned broth is the key to a delicious hot pot experience. When you're cooking raw meat, seafood, and vegetables for only a few seconds, the flavor outcome is wholly dependent on the quality of the broth. We spoke to one expert who has just the ingredient to elevate your chicken hot pot broth.

As long as you start out with some quality chicken stock, the hot broth pot should come out savory, rich, and ready to infuse all kinds of ingredients with a delightful flavor. However, Kenny Leung, Executive Chef at YAO, likes to add one more thing to really make the hot pot pop. "I recommend adding coconut [milk] to your chicken broth to add a bit of creaminess," he says. Coconut milk lends the broth a slightly thicker body, making it feel as rich as it already tastes. The creamy liquid and chicken are already a classic pairing, with sweet, tropical coconut milk enhancing the umaminess of poultry.

Coconut milk also complements other broth ingredients, adding a velvety taste to herbaceous green onions and giving shiitake mushrooms an even more buttery texture. Start out by making homemade chicken stock and remove the meat and bones. Adding loads of coconut milk to a thin broth can quickly turn it into a creamy, soup-like texture, so start out with a small amount. Gradually add it in, stirring and allowing the broth to simmer, until you've reached your desired consistency.

Popular Chinese hot pot broth ingredients typically consist of items like mushrooms, tomatoes, ginger, garlic, green onions, and goji berries, giving the broth an umami, herbaceous flavor. Coconut milk's creamy, sweet taste has a nutty hint, making it fit right along with these items. However, as hot pot has spread to other Asian cuisines, there is a wealth of ingredients you can use to elevate the flavor of the broth. Leung is a master at Cantonese cuisine, yet his coconut milk recommendation for broth would taste incredible with Thai flavors.

Coconut milk is a staple of the cuisine, blending right in with the zesty, spicy flavors of Thai food. If you're unsure of which ingredients to include, look at pairings within a dish you love. Chicken Massaman curry features coconut milk, with the ingredient lending the recipe a rich, silky texture. The other star, of course, is Massaman curry paste. Made from fermented shrimp paste, shallots, cinnamon, cumin, cloves, and more, a tablespoon or two can infuse the broth with a warm, spiced taste.

Massaman curry features the sweet flavor of baking spices, but coconut milk also pairs well with straight-up spice. Fiery ingredients like hot chili peppers and fresh ginger are quickly soothed by coconut milk's creaminess. Go for a more vibrant taste with the broth and add in lemongrass, lime juice, and Szechuan peppercorns.